Contact lenses are being worn by more people, both young and old, today than ever before. Contact lenses vary from soft to hard, and can be extended wear or disposable, or something in between.
No matter what the type, all contact lenses have certain characteristics in common. For example, the lenses must be placed on the wearer's cornea for use and removed for storage, disposal or cleaning. This requires a user to touch the lens. It has been documented that, due to the warm and moist environment existing in the eye, the eye is a prime breeding ground for bacteria. Therefore, contact lens cleaning is essential to healthy eyes and comfort, and contact lenses should be cleaned well and often.
Most cleaning procedures require the wearer to handle the lens to remove it, to clean it and to re-insert it. Thus, the lenses must be touched while they are in the user's eye and when they are out of the user's eye.
While many contact lens wearers are quite adept at handling their lenses, some, especially the inexperienced contact lens wearer, are not. This makes the removal and insertion of contact lenses an onerous task for such people, and may inhibit proper care and wearing of such lenses.
Still further, even proficient contact lens wearers often do not clean their hands well enough prior to touching their lenses to ensure fully antiseptic conditions. Thus, the weak point in most contact lens cleaning procedures centers around the requirement that the wearer touch the lens with his or her hands some time during a cleaning or storing process.
Therefore, there is a need for an accessory for holding contact lenses which will facilitate insertion and removal of such lenses from a wearer's eye, even for inexperience or inept wearers, and which will permit cleaning of such lenses without requiring the user to touch the lenses with his or her hands.